Get ready!    Here is a great “perk” and offer of support for what the music bloggers and music education leaders are doing as part of theME Blogger campaign.  I’ve been working with NAXOS Music Online Library to provide the ME Bloggers with a vote of support for seminal work for what they/we are doing and they’ve graciously decide to help support our campaign by GIVING TO EACH AND EVERYONE OF THE CURRENT AND FUTURE 100 ME BLOGGERS -UNLIMITED, FREE, ACCESS TO THEIR ONLINE LIBRARY TO JANUARY OF 2009! (This is a value of $120.00 per person or $12,000) JUST for the 100 ME Bloggers!!!).

Think of what you will be able to do in your courses/classes with access to such an incredible free resource of audio music!  If you’ve never used an online repository like this you are in for a “mind-blowing” experience.  Naxos has almost 300,000 full length tracks of music online and almost 20,000 CDs.   In addition they include, comprehensive liner notes, opera synopses and libretti, composer biographies and other great information as part of the package.

If you have internet access in your classroom, you will easily be able to integrate this great resource into almost every aspect of your music teaching curriculum.   If you don’t have access in the rooms, you will still be able to access this great resource for planning, self-enrichment, and studying purposes…. (I’ll bet you can get your admins to make this work for you in your classes!).

What’s in this for NAXOS?  Well, truthfully…  they only want to give more exposure to their great serviceto the right audience AND what audience can be more right and appropriate for them than our very OWN ME Bloggers?   They’ve assured me that they aren’t going to bombard you with unsolicited emails and/or endless questionnaires or EVER sell your email address to any third party for any reason.  What they did tell me is that if you’ve liked their service and/or have any ideas/thoughts about it or how you have/intend to use it with your program, that they would like to hear back from you at some point.   I think you would expect that for someone that just gave you something of this kind of value! :)   I am really excited about this gracious and generous FREE offer form NAXOS and KNOW that you will be to.   If you want to hear Darren and I talking to one of the reps. from the library, Randall Foster, check out this podcast from us!

What’s in this for me?  NOTHING!  I just get the great honor and pleasure of announcing something this cool, unprecedented, and great to all you who are working so hard to, literally, change and advance the face of music education as we know it!   We are making an impact regardless of whether or not you’ve seen a tremendous amount of visitors to your site, or increased number of comments, or feedback that you may or may not have gotten (I’ve told you that this would be long, slow journey that we will take TOGETHER)…  WHAT HAS HAPPENED is that we are beginning the fist digitalized, web 2.0 based, global conversations among our peers about a discipline that has long been shrouded by various misnomers, and for too long, kept to the confines of the four walls of our classrooms.   Our topics and posts are:

  • Beginning to be indexed by the search engines
  • Being found by interested readers, students, teachers, and peers
  • Being incorporated into the thoughts of others
  • Helping US to learn from each other
  • Reaching people that we can’t reach through other means
  • Changing the way we think about ourselves and our profession
  • Making us realize that we are MANY
  • Allowing us to see that we are all not alone in our trials and tribulations
  • Allowing us to share our joy of accomplishments
  • Allowing for a better community of music educators
  • Changing and adding ways that music expertise is dispersed to the masses 
  • Changing the way the world looks at what we do and who we are
  • Increasing the awareness of our profession
  • Giving us a voice!

We are making a difference!   I’m constantly amazed at how many of the teachers that I know, once they begin blogging, have their perspective changed, for the better, and the whole process invigorates and re-charges them.  It happened to me years ago as well!

Here are the basic rules of the ME Blogger Campaign:

The Basic Rules:

  1. You must have (or have started) a blog site and not a simple website.
  2. You must agree to post as regularly as you able to about a topic that is interesting to you, your students, the music audience as a whole, etc. that related to music education and/or music technology in the classroom environment. Literally, you can almost blog about anything related… the “world is your oyster!”. I know many of you can’t post every day , week, or even couple-to-three weeks, but let’s strive for at least a post a month! 
  3. You must agree to not “covet” all your materials and share many of them, freely, with the world so we all can gain from everyone’s expertise and experiences. Of course you are free to copyright your creative works and ideas as you see fit, afterall they’re yours! We are encouraging ME Bloggers to consider using a creative commons license (your pick!) to help them preserve their ideas while allowing others to access them in ways that the ME Bloggers see fit. Becoming a ME Blogger does not in anyway obligate you to give up an of your commercial venues or have everything on your blog “given away anything or everything for free”. It simply means that you are blogging for the good of music education and that you are part of the global conversation about it! What we are NOT looking for in a ME bloggers is a blog that is specifically designed to sell products and/or services.
  4. You must actively participate in our “global conversation” about our field by joining in the conversation with others:
    1. Agreeing to comment on other ME Bloggers posts as you are able to and have the ability to contribute or encourage
    2. Share your blog with others by linking to the other ME Bloggers in either your blogroll or a page of ME Bloggers
    3. Agreeing to answer legitimate questions by ME Bloggers and others that post questions on your site in a timely manner.
  5. Let me/us know you exist! Comment after this post, or visit our contact page!

When you become an ME blogger, post about our campaign as much as you want, tell your friends…we know this is going to be a long haul…let’s take the first step together!

That’s it… it’s easy!  You may already be doing this already!  If you want to become a ME Blogger, please join our campaign today and let me know about you and the great things that you are doing for the music profession!

Now, I know that this “perk and reward” for being a ME BLOGGER may begin to attract people, that just make up a “fake blog” for the purposes of getting the free account…so I’m going to be asking a few more questions than usual for newbies… but  I don’t think that will have much of a problem as the music “bunch” is a pretty straight-forward group of people! :)

PLEASE, IF YOU HAVEN’T MADE THE ROUNDS YET CHECKING IN WITH THE OTHER ME BLOGGERS, PLEASE DO SO!  YOU KNOW HOW GREAT IT IS TO FEEL VALIDATED!  DO SOME VALIDATING TODAY AND EVERY WEEK!  Leave a comment and encouragement on everything you read!  It only takes a few seconds.  Leave one here today!

I will begin the process of spreading the access information to the current 40+ ME Bloggers in next few days (stay tuned… the new official post will be up in a few days!) and continue to spread this great GIFT to all the new ME Bloggers as the come online with our program!  This is just OUR way of saying THANK-YOU for stepping up, getting out of the box, and realizing your potential as an expert and leader in our field!

A very special thanks to the NAXOS ONLINE MUSIC LIBRARY and RANDALL FOSTER, for making this a reality!

Best regards and happy listening!,

      Dr. Joseph M. Pisano

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ME BLOGGER CAMPAIGN CLICK HERE

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE NAXOX ONLINE LIBRARY CLICK HERE

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